Julian Barnes has called it 'posh bingo' but the Man Booker Prize also has a
history of bust-ups and disorder

Julian Barnes, a former winner of the Man Booker Prize, once described the selection process as "posh bingo".

The decision to jettison Alan Hollinghurst from 2011's shortlist prompted hand-wringing and garrulity ("the Booker can drive people quite mad," Hollinghurst later said) but it was just another chapter in the story of a prize with a rich and joyously barmy history of disorder.

Since its inception in 1969, judges have bitched – in public – and there has been gossip and complaint about good novels being discarded by dumb assessors. The Booker book of bruised egos would be very large.

Barnes had been shortlisted three times before eventually winning. After missing out with his novel Flaubert’s Parrot in 1984, he recalled: "I was introduced after the ceremony to one of the judges, who said to me: ‘I hadn’t even heard of this fellow Flaubert before I read your book. But afterwards I sent out for all his novels in paperback.’ This comment provoked mixed feelings."

Barnes chose droll reminiscence to highlight the absurdity of the literary prize fandango but there have been less civilised reactions, with swearing, feuding and tantrums among publishers and authors.

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Salman Rushie once reportedly told the man who ran the prize for 34 years, Martyn Goff, to "f--- off". Goff himself traded insults with judge David Baddiel, accusing him of saying "stupid things." The comedian hit back calling Goff's remarks "really weird".

Literary rows were nothing new for Goff. In 1971 Malcolm Muggeridge, having read through most of the submissions, withdrew from the judging panel declaring himself "nauseated and appalled" by the books he had been sent.

A year later there was a superbly daft spat at the awards dinner in the Café Royal when winner John Berger got up and announced he was planning to give half his prize money to the Black Panther movement in protest at what he alleged was Booker’s colonialist policy in the West Indies. Some guests walked out in protest. Perhaps they should have stayed and asked him "why only half?"

In 1973, J G Farrell used his winner’s speech to denounce capitalism, as represented by Booker. He was not affronted enough, however, to give back his £5,000 prize money.

In 1974, eyebrows were raised when Kingsley Amis’s Ending Up appeared on the shortlist chosen by a judging panel that included his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. In the end, the prize was split between Nadine Gordimer and Stanley Middleton.

Some judges have broken ranks to describe the horrors of a literary bun fight. In 1985, Joanna Lumley said of her experience as a judge: "The so-called bitchy world of acting was a Brownie’s tea party compared with the piranha-infested waters of publishing."

At least most of the judges seem to read the books that are submitted. "Norman St John Stevas didn't read everything, or possibly anything," Goff once joked

It's great that books are taken seriously enough to warrant strong emotion as when 1976 Chairman Philip Larkin threatened to jump out of the window if Paul Scott’s superb Staying On didn’t win. Years later, Anthony Cheetham, publisher of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, called the judges "a bunch of w------’ for not shortlisting the book.

Some of the rows are more arcane. There was a dispute in 1982 over whether Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark was fiction or non-fiction.

Of course the gimmicks, gossip, hype, name-calling and wounded authors (who can later earn healthy commissions writing why-oh-why pieces and these-should-have-made-it lists) all add to the publicity for the award giving the Booker Prize (now sponsored by Man) what they want.

There was lots of publicity in 2011 for the International Man Booker prize when Carmen Callil resigned from the jury complaining that the winner Philip Roth was a misogynist.

So expect words to cascade out both backing and attacking the 2014 winner when it is announced at the black-tie prizegiving dinner at the Guildhall in London. As the Telegraph's Head of Books Gaby Wood, a former Booker judge, wrote: "Members of the publishing establishment can sometimes be heard to ask influential booksellers whether the winner is the 'right winner' for them."

As Barnes said of the award: "It drives publishers mad with hope, booksellers mad with greed, judges mad with power, winners mad with pride, and losers (the unsuccessful short-listees plus every other novelist in the country) mad with envy and disappointment . . . novelists had better conclude that the only sensible attitude to the Booker is to treat it as posh bingo. It is El Gordo, the Fat One, the sudden jackpot that enriches some plodding Andalusian muleteer."

Those thoughts are unlikely to trouble the 46th winner tonight when he or she scoops the £50,000 jackpot.

In 1976, incidentally, Larkin did not have to throw himself out of a window because Scott deservedly won the prize. One guest that year was the recently departed Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He came to the dinner because his wife Mary was one of the judges – but he came only in time for pudding since he had spent the first part of the evening at an international boxing match.

Tonight's guests will probably stay for the whole dinner . . . but will they see the literary gloves come off?